Last year, Americans bought more than 250,000 hybrids, and you can make three general statements about all of them: They get better mileage in the city than on the highway, they're either cars or small car-based SUVs, and they're pretty much guaranteed to be powered by Toyota.

There are the Prius, Camry, and Highlander hybrids, and Lexus has hybrid versions of the GS, RX, and LS. Then there is the Ford Escape, the Mercury Mariner, and the Nissan Altima -- all of which use Toyota's system under license. Standing tall against the Toyota onslaught, we have...the Honda Civic, right now looking a bit like Custer surveying the scene at Little Bighorn.

But Toyota, that do-no-wrong profit monster, won't have the hybrid market cornered for much longer. Because for the past three years, more than five hundred of the world's best auto engineers have been hunkered down in an office complex a few miles outside Detroit. They've spent $300 million studying and learning from Toyota's hybrid technology in a quest to finally stick a few arrows in Godzilla's scaly hide. And it looks like they may have succeeded.

But here's the weird thing: The engineers aren't from GM, or Chrysler, or even BMW. They're from all of them.

The race for a Godzilla killer began about three years ago at an engineering conference, when representatives from DaimlerChrysler and GM gave eerily similar presentations on how to improve upon Toyota's approach to hybrids. Both companies wanted to build a better hybrid, but neither thought it could catch up to Toyota's ten-year head start. So in November 2004, they decided to pool their money and resources and announced a partnership. A year later, BMW joined as well. The battle of Toyota versus Everyone Else was set.

The perimeter of the 150,000-square-foot Hybrid Development Center in Troy, Michigan, is littered with Priuses and pickup trucks -- tangible evidence of the quest to build a better hybrid. Inside, there are four areas -- one for each of the three companies, plus a common area where information is shared. That shared area is hugely significant, particularly in the case of BMW and former Chrysler parent Mercedes. I'm quite sure that each company believes it's the most brilliant car company ever. So for them to put aside their rivalry speaks to the threat posed by the Toyota juggernaut. And if I were Toyota, I'd be worried about this.

"You'd think there'd be problems with this setup," says Nick Cappa, manager of advanced technology communications for Chrysler. "But everybody shared. We all know what the others are doing, but we're not going to tell anyone else." And as for cultural and corporate barriers impeding the project, Cappa says that "engineers all speak the same language." And they're all working toward the same goal: finding the Prius's weaknesses and countering them.

For starters, Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive is not exactly a heavy-duty system. The Highlander hybrid is probably the butchest vehicle to carry a battery pack, and it can tow only thirty-five hundred pounds and comes with a disclaimer warning that if you take it off-road, it will break and you'll be eaten by bears. Then there's the problem of suburbs, where half of all Americans live. While the Toyota system works great in the city, where it can capitalize on regenerative braking and maximize use of the electric motors, on the highway it's essentially a gas motor hauling around a bunch of heavy hybrid crap. The city/highway-mileage schism is compounded by Toyota's continuously variable transmission, which isn't as efficient on the highway as a good old-fashioned direct mechanical power path. It's here that the unprecedented consortium is aiming.

Called a two-mode hybrid, their system aims to deliver the best of both worlds: the urban benefits of a hybrid along with the highway efficiency and heavy-duty capability of a conventional power train. The endgame is a hybrid system that'll make a difference in the vehicles that need it most: trucks. And it's quite a target. Last year GM, Ford, and Chrysler sold 5.5 million trucks and SUVs. The lesson being, if someone can build a truck that's slightly less profligate, it ought to sell like meth in rural Pennsylvania.

If the Chevy Tahoe hybrid, the first car to come out of the hybrid consortium, had a lip, it'd be packed full of Skoal. It can tow six thousand pounds. It comes with two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive. And under the hood lies a big-ass six-liter V-8 that pumps out 332 horsepower. Despite its Nascar-worthy front air dam and low-rolling-resistance tires, this thing's not going to get forty-five miles per gallon. But it will get around 25 percent better fuel economy than its nonhybrid counterpart -- somewhere around twenty-three miles per gallon. That's not enough to save the world, but it will save you real gas.

Driving a preproduction version, my initial impression is that it's very Toyota-like in its behavior. If you're easy on the gas, it steps off the line under electric power, just like a Toyota. The navigation screen can depict the interplay of gas and electric power, just like a Toyota. And when you put your foot into it, the gasoline engine fires up, just like a Toyota.

But unlike a Toyota, highway speeds don't bring the high revs that are characteristic of a continuously variable transmission. Instead, the Tahoe locks into the highest of its four conventional gears, keeping the revs down and the miles per gallon up -- that's the two-mode concept at work. In my drive around Manhattan, which involved some stop-and-go traffic, some West Side Highway cruising, and a couple of full-throttle merges, the Tahoe delivered almost twenty miles per gallon, mileage that a nonhybrid Tahoe is hard-pressed to get under the best of circumstances.

But it's also worth mentioning that this thing is scary fast for a truck the size of a studio apartment. GM won't divulge the hybrid system's "net power" rating (à la Toyota), but the V-8's 332 horses get significant help from the twin sixty-kilowatt electric motors when you summon full throttle. My guess is that the total effect is something like 400 horsepower. And thanks to an aluminum hood and liftgate, lightweight seats, and a few other weight-saving tricks, the usual hybrid weight gain is held to around a hundred pounds, so I wouldn't be surprised if this greenest of Tahoes also turns out to be the quickest.

Blasting onto the West Side Highway, I can see why BMW is on board with the two-mode system -- when you drive it hard, it moves up through the gears in a reassuringly familiar way instead of pegging the revs at a constant point like an overgrown snowmobile. This is a system that BMW can tailor to deliver the driving experience its customers expect, and I imagine it would work quite well in something like an X5, though for now BMW won't say.

But GM and Chrysler are only too eager to talk. First to market in November comes the Tahoe and its upmarket twin, the GMC Yukon. Then next summer, the Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen. (Neither GM nor Dodge will release pricing just yet, but both claim they will be somewhere in the middle of their lineups, which would be around $40,000.) And I'd be surprised if Mercedes didn't find a home for the hybrid system, even though its breakup with Chrysler is complete. (Hopefully for Mercedes, the terms of the sale included joint custody of the two-mode technology.)

When that happens, the next generation of hybrids will be in full stride, having evolved from economy cars into useful midsize sedans and SUVs. These are cars for people who aren't exactly green-minded, cars for people who like to save gas as long as it doesn't mean changing their lifestyles. In other words, cars for the rest of us.